Pimogam
Pimogam was a language spoken from 3400BK to 700BK and was the first language to develop from Proto-Pogeduimogan. Vowel epenthesis occurring in non-high vowels and the raising of mid vowels left Pimogan with only three distinct vowels and an abnormal (compared to other related languages) orthography. Part of this was the use of the letters (sometimes, but rarely, ) and to represent /i/ and /u/ in some words, and the use of to represent /j/ instead of its usually corresponding /ɣ/ in the syllable coda. Phonology Pimogam did not make a distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants. Stress and Tone Pimogam had a regular (but slightly complicated) stress rule with no exceptions. Stress in Pimogam did not affect syllable length. All syllables were pronounced the same length of time, stressed or unstressed. A stressed syllable, however, is notably lower in pitch than unstressed syllables. Monosyllables were sometimes pronounced as though unstressed when one would speak quickly, although the correct pronunciation is low pitch like a stressed syllable. Stress falls on the penultimate (second to last) syllable of each word, unless the word contains the letter or . In this case, the syllable closest to the end of the word that contains either letter is stressed. This gets more complicated. If the word has one or more s and one or more s, the syllable closest to the end of the word that contains an is stressed. Here are some examples: tinu ˈtì.nū "light green" itamea ī.tā.ˈmì.ā "alphabet" (but in the genitive plural, the first becomes semivocalic; itameae ī.tā.mɪ̯ā.ˈì) nite nī.ˈtì "take dubog ðū.ˈβùɪ̯ "central" onnem ˈùn.nīm "eleventh" Stress often shifts due to many conjugational suffixes having an or . This also occurs in nouns (but only in the genitive plural of the second declension, of which the suffix is ''-e'') and adjectives (but only with the suffix ''-e'', which marked neuter gender). Verbs Unlike nouns, verbs had only one inflectional paradigm. Many more verbs are irregular, since many regular verbs became moderately or heavily irregular. Some examples of heavily irregular verbs are ad, hik, nite, dend. Person and number were not marked in verbs, and in other related languages aren't either. Tense, Aspect, and Mood Verbs distinguished four things: tense, aspect, mood, and voice. The three tenses are: anterior past, past, non-past. The anterior past was used to express the pluperfect, the remote past, and the relative past. The past was used to express the perfect, and the recent past. The non-past expressed the present, the future, and relative future. The suffixes for the anterior past disappeared from Pimogam and were instead replaced by the corresponding past form of the auxiliary word nite (which literally means "take") and the perfect active infinitive. The three aspects are: repetitive, initial, progressive. The repetitive expressed habituality and iterativity. The initial expressed the inchoative and prospective aspects. It also expressed simple present in the present. The progressive expressed both the continuous and the progressive. The four moods are: indicative, subjunctive, subjunctive II, and imperative. Both subjunctives were used the same as in Proto-Pogeduimogan. The interrogative was not considered a separate mood, and unlike other moods was expressed using the auxiliary adverb kiu. Voice The two voices are: active, antipassive. There may have been a reflexive voice. However, reciprocal expressions were rare and not regarded as a distinct voice in verbal inflection. Reflexive Voice The reflexive voice, unlike other voices, was marked through a new reflexive pronoun. Reciprocality was also expressed using the reflexive pronoun. The reflexive pronoun, which did not exist in Proto-Ydtobogȧntiaky, but did exist in Proto-Pogeduimogan, was derived from the noun form of the word for "two". Conjugation Pimogam verbs distinguish less things and as a result use less suffixes. Some verbs add an -a before some suffixes to make the word easier to pronounce. Verbs conjugated for active voice are slightly shorter than for others because active voice is unmarked. P stands for past, N stand for non-past. Irregular Verbs Many verbs have become irregular, such as nite "take" Nouns Pimogam nouns declined for only five cases as opposed to its predecessor Proto-Pogeduimogan's six cases and the much older Proto-Ydtobogȧntiaky's eight. This was due to the tripartite alignment of Proto-Pogeduimogan collapsing into an ergative-absolutive system. Because of this, Pimogam nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles are listed here in their absolutive forms. However, Pimogam retained the common and neuter genders from its predecessor. First Declension Nouns of this declension are usually common. Root-final nasals tend to assimilate before a plosive, fricative, or nasal of a different place of articulation. This is not considered irregular. Second Declension Nouns of this declension are usually neuter. Third Declension Nouns of this declension can be either gender. Pronouns Pronouns declined much like nouns. There are also two demonstrative pronouns and two reflexive pronouns. The demonstrative pronouns ta and tok mean "this/that" and "these/those" respectively. The reflexive pronouns una and uk are singular and plural respectively. As you can see, the singular pronouns end in -a, while the plural pronouns end in -k. The singular pronouns decline exactly like singular second declension nouns, but the plural pronouns decline exactly like singular third declension nouns. Another pronoun, ibi, is used as a fourth person singular pronoun for indefinite referents. It translates roughly as "one" or sometimes "you". The fourth person singular pronoun is declined exactly like a singular second declension noun, like other singular pronouns. Examples: beurim bek da "I see you(plural)" ydrd rak ga dar "He has given them to me" kiu derdem la "Can you(singular) move?" Adjectives Adjectives declined for five cases like nouns, but sometimes did not distinguish between singular and plural. Unlike nouns, adjectives had only one inflectional paradigm. Adjectives also decline for gender. Adjectives and adverbs were not distinguished in Pimogam. Short Form Adjectives had a short form and a long form. The short form was marked by a null morpheme and is declined like a second declension noun. The short form was used when the adjective/adverb described a verb or in statements such as higim pug ga "It is blue (temporarily)". The short form had singular and plural forms. When describing a verb, the short form was always used in the absolutive and was used in the plural absolutive when the agent or subject of the verb was more than one person/thing. Basically, the short form is used as a substantive, predicative, or describing-verb adjective/adverb. Long Form The long form was marked by the suffix -m (common absolutive) and was declined using the suffixes in the table below. The long form was used when the adjective/adverb described a noun or another adjective/adverb, unless the described adjective/adverb described a verb. Unlike the short form, this form did not mark plurality. The long form was only used to describe adjectives and nouns. Sometimes an was added between the root and the suffix to make the new word pronounceable. This was not considered irregular. Articles Although the numeral ibi "one" is not considered an article, it was sometimes used to mark an indefinite noun. When the modified noun has one or more other adjectives and ibi comes before them all, it means "one". If ibi comes after all the adjectives (but still before the noun in this case), it means "a(n)". If ibi is the only modifier (besides genitives and postpositions) on the noun and comes before like normal, it means "one". If it comes after the noun, it means "a(n)" . The same works with el "ten*" (in a base 12 numeral system, so it's technically "twelve") and its other article-like meaning, "some". The singular demonstrative adjective dam corresponds to a singular "the", while the plural demonstrative adjective "kam" corresponds to a plural "the". Some of these words may appear in short form, although under these circumstances they are always used in long form. See Short Form and Long Form Syntax The most common word order was verb-object-subject. Pimogam was mostly head-initial in some parts of the language, but in others was mostly head-final. The syntactic word order a noun phrase usually follows is shown below: (genitive) (adverb) (adjective) noun (particle) (postposition) Just like in noun phrases, adverbs come before and particles come after the verb. Orthography Pimogam used a form of Itamea that consisted of all original eighteen letters and no diacritics. Pronunciation Below is a list of each letter and its pronunciation. /i/ syllable nucleus /ɪ̯/ semivocalic /m/ /n/ /a/ /ð/ /ɣ/ preceding a vowel /ɪ̯/ preceding a consonant or word final /t/ /k/ /u/ sometimes indicated irregular stress /ɹ/ /l/ /p/ /i/ sometimes indicated irregular stress /h/ /i/ mostly in words of foreign origin /β/ <ŋ> /ŋ/ /u/ syllable nucleus /ʊ̯/ semivocalic Long Vowels (except before a vowel), , , , , and are not considered digraphs, although they act like it. Respectively, they represent /i:, i:, i:, u:, u:, i:/, not /iɪ̯, iɪ̯, ɪ̯i, uʊ̯, ʊ̯u, iɪ̯/. The vowel they represent are distinctively longer than other vowels, and are held for almost twice as long as usual. Gemination There are few geminate consonants in Pimogam. Those that do exist are represented by a double letter (i.e. tamm tàm:), and intervocalically are realized as two identical consecutive consonants in different syllables (i.e. illem īl.ˈlìm). Words of Foreign Origin and Y Pimogam has some foreign words (as do all languages), but the spelling and pronunciation of the original word is almost never kept. In borrowings from other Itamea-using languages, words with the letter retained the letter (which isn't in most native words, one common exception being yd "give") if the pronunciation wasn't altered to omit the vowel. Category:Ydtobogȧntiaky languages